In general

I realize I haven't posted much at all for the past few months - aside from a scattering of memes and some bitching about my health. There have actually been a number of things I thought about posting, but then I just never got to it and by the time I did I felt it was past the point of being worth posting. And it occurs to me that I never posted about the general cause to a lot of this...

People who know me know I have never had much of a sleep schedule. I'd just sleep when I could, stay up for a couple of days, crash for a day, etc. But I was always a sound sleeper and when I made time to sleep I slept and got a good nights rest. I could sleep just about anywhere, any time. And if I got sleep deprived I could 'catch up' on sleep by power crashing for 12-14 hours. That's pretty much how I lived my life from my early teens until last year, at 34.

Starting late last year I started feeling fatigued more often. I'd sleep but I'd wake up feeling like I could really use more rest. Now, because of my sleep habits that wasn't too unusual before. So I wrote it off for a while and figured I'd 'catch up' on a weekend, etc. But over time I found myself increasingly tired, and I'd sleep all weekend and still feel dead on Monday. During the work week I'd drag my ass home at the end of the day and have no energy. By the end of the week I'd feel wrung out. At first I thought it was work. Last fall I took over as Director of IT Operations and that was more responsibility and more stress. Then John quit and that left just qedrakmar and I to handle all of IT for several months. I figured it was just the higher workload and higher stress wearing me out, so I didn't give it too much though. I figured I'd be hiring new people and the load would go down and I'd go back to 'normal', such as it was for me.

Well, we hired Matt and Tamara mid-year and it did reduce the load. I took some time off to just rest at the time and I thought things would level out again. But they didn't. Over the past several months I've been feeling just totally exhausted most of the time. It has been killing what little social life I had, and I keep making plans for myself only to cancel them in favor of sleeping or just staying home and being a lump. A few months ago the thought started bubbling into my brain that I might have a sleeping disorder. I used to sleep 8-9 hours and wake up rested, now I'd sleep 12-14 hours and wake up tired. z_gryphon has sleep apnea and I remember from living with him what some of his symptoms were. slarti and dsrtao have also posted about sleep apnea and what they described sounded similar to what I've been experiencing. So I started thinking that maybe it was something I should have checked out, but I never quite got around to it.

Then miashell told me, a couple of months ago, that I a) snored (which is something I didn't used to do, at least not regularly) and b) that I just stopped breathing in my sleep. I'd snore, then stop breathing completely for 30 seconds, then resume. Yeah, well, that sounds a lot like sleep apnea. So during my last checkup, a couple of months ago, I mentioned all of this to my doc, who agreed that it sounded like sleep apnea. So I got an appointment with the UMass Sleep Clinic. Apparently they're booked pretty solid, because the first appointment I could get was almost two months out - which happens to be this Thursday, November 2.

So, yeah, this Thursday I go for my first visit. I don't think they'll be doing any tests or anything this time, just my first Q&A and evaluation. We'll see what happens.

But this is why I've kind of dropped off the face of the net, compared to my old habits. I've stopped visiting a number of forums, fell back out of writing with z_gryphon, haven't been going out as much, etc - because I'm just tired. It tends to take me at least an hour to just get rolling in the morning, do it is a couple of hours between first waking up and making it into work. Then I work a full day, and by the time I go home I'm too tired to do anything. By the end of the week I usually crash so hard that Saturday is just gone. Sunday I catch up on things I need to do, then the week starts over.

I'm tired of being tired. It saps my motivation to do anything - go to movies, see people, write, read, etc. I tend to go home, sit on the couch and eat dinner while watching some TiVo, then crash. And I feel like it is impacting my work too, because my brain is just slow sometimes, and that frustrates me and pisses me off, because I'm usually pretty sharp. I've dropped a few balls here and there and that really upsets me because it just isn't like me. I know I've forgotten to do things I've promised to do, at work and in my personal life, or I've flaked because I was too tired to do something.

I'm sorry for anyone I've let down. Or anyone I've snapped at or been bitchy towards, because I know I've been a cranky bastard at times. I often have a low grade fatigue headache (like now) and just feel on edge and jumpy, so I know I've been snippy when it was really uncalled for.

So I'm hoping I can sort this out and I can get my life back and learn how to rest again.